Britain Closes Web Site With Spies' Names

By WARREN HOGE

Published: May 14, 1999

LONDON, May 13—
An embittered former British spy has used the Internet to make public the names of a large number of secret agents, but officials in London said today that the Web site had been shut down and that no duplicates had surfaced.

The Foreign Office said British security and the lives of more than 100 people were put in jeopardy by the action, which it attributed to Richard Tomlinson, 35, an agent of the Secret Intelligence Service, formerly known as M.I.6, who was let go in 1995 and later served a jail term for violating Britain's Official Secrets Act.

A spokesman for the Foreign Office said this afternoon that the offending site, based in the United States, had been taken off the Internet ''apparently at the initiative of the provider.'' It first appeared on Wednesday night, setting off frantic official efforts to silence it. Foreign Office experts were no longer able to gain access to the site today, the spokesman said, convincing them that it had been fully removed.

The Internet is feared by intelligence agencies as a particularly dangerous and untrackable threat to national security because it is virtually beyond the control of national laws and authorities. Even with the Tomlinson Web site shut down, British officials faced the problem that once a page has appeared on the Internet, it is simple for other users to copy it onto their own Web pages, a process known as mirroring.

Foreign Secretary Robin Cook said that the list, reportedly including 116 names, was ''riddled with inaccuracies'' but that ''nevertheless, the release of any such list, however inaccurate it may be, is a deeply irresponsible and dangerous act.'' Some were names of people with no connection to the security services and some were retired agents. But some were indeed names of current operatives, the Foreign Office spokesman said.

Earlier this month, Britain obtained an injunction in Switzerland to shut down another Web site based there and operated by Mr. Tomlinson, on which he had threatened to publish intelligence information. Mr. Tomlinson lives in Geneva.

Late today, a previously removed Tomlinson site reappeared in the ''mirror'' form that officials fear might lead to the resurfacing of the new list. Containing 10 names of Government people asserted to have links to the death in 1997 of Diana, Princess of Wales, it had been taken down last week by its California-based provider, Geocities, after a notice from the British Treasury called the company's attention to it.

The Foreign Office is not in contact with Mr. Tomlinson, but an E-mail said to be from the former agent arrived at BBC offices in London today asserting that British officials were ''overreacting for public effect to stigmatize my efforts.''

Speaking of the former agent, who served six months of a one-year sentence in 1997 after pleading guilty to trying to publish a book disclosing his knowledge of agency activities, Mr. Cook said, ''I regret Mr. Tomlinson appears to nurse an irrational, deep-seated sense of grievance.''

He had been arrested after showing a seven-page synopsis of his intended book to an Australian publisher. He was charged under Section 1 of the Official Secrets Act, which forbids any unauthorized disclosure by a current or former officer of the security services. His conviction was the first under the act since 1961.

Released from prison last May, he went to France, Spain and then on to Switzerland. He asserted that British security officials followed and harassed him on his travels. He repeatedly complained about the British Government's decision in 1995 to bar him from appealing his firing.

Mr. Cook said today: ''I can report that when Mr. Tomlinson left the service, he was assisted to find employment and did himself say it was the job of his dreams. He did also receive appropriate settlement from the service.''

The British press today complied with a Foreign Office request not to publish the Web address or the name of the American provider.

A Foreign Office spokesman said he could not comment on contacts between British and American officials over the matter, but said early apprehension over the difficulty of shutting down a Web site in the United States, compared with the same task in Europe, had subsided. ''Given the First Amendment and the open freedom of information there, you would have thought it would be more difficult,'' he said.

Born in New Zealand and educated at Cambridge, Mr. Tomlinson joined M.I.6 in 1991 and served in Bosnia, Russia and the Middle East. He has made a number of assertions since his dismissal, including accusations that M.I.6 tried to assassinate the Yugoslav leader, Slobodan Milosevic, in 1992; that British intelligence was involved in the death of Diana, and that Britain had a highly placed spy in Germany's central bank who leaked secrets over a 12-year period. ''In the past, he has been very prone to fantasy,'' the spokesman said.

One of his taunting Web sites carried a partly obscured photo of himself against the backdrop of the Thames-side M.I.6 headquarters, whose fanciful architecture has given the building the nickname the Circus. The site switched on to the sounds of the theme music from ''Monty Python's Flying Circus.''